(a) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system and method for providing contents, and a server and a computer program for configuring the system. More specifically, the present invention relates to a technique for providing contents to a portable terminal via the Internet according to a user's authentication or a fee settlement.
(b) Description of the Related Art
As the Internet has been greatly popularized, contents providers (CP) that provide various contents on the Internet have also increased. Particularly, since transmission speeds of the Internet have become faster, the categories of the contents provided by the contents providers have been expanded to various media such as still images, moving pictures and music, as well as text.
Also, as Internet services that use portable wireless terminals such as mobile phones and personal digital assistants (PDAs) have begun, electronic mail communication and navigation of Internet contents using wireless terminals have increased. Some contents providers provide wireless-terminal-only contents to users who search information using wireless terminals. However, most contents providers provide contents to those who navigate information via ordinary computers and cable networks and not to wireless terminal users.
Wireless terminal users can access general contents providers that focus on computer users and receive desired contents from them, but subsequent problems may occur in the case of accessing a general contents provider using a wireless terminal.
First, computers and wireless terminals respectively have different information sizes, display specifications and storage capacities. Accordingly, when a user receives contents from general contents providers using a portable terminal, the contents can be inappropriately displayed on the terminal.
Second, since the information receipt speed via a wireless terminal is slower than that via a general computer, it takes a long time to receive desired contents from general contents providers via a portable terminal. Particularly, when a user accesses general contents providers that provide contents of large data sizes such as images as well as text, the information receipt speed becomes a bigger problem.
Generally, therefore, users receive desired contents from wireless-terminal-only contents providers via the portable terminals, and accordingly, the range of contents is restricted.
When desiring to receive contents of a specific field (e.g., travel) using a portable terminal, a user must individually access a plurality of web sites that provide the contents of a specific field to get corresponding contents. However, in this case, since communication channel environments are unstable because of characteristics of the wireless Internet, the user's access state may be disconnected, so it takes much time and effort to access the multiple web sites and receive the contents.